You give me (F1) fever

I had a VIP box at the first ever F1 night race!
Well, it seemed like that anyway.
My aunt's suntec city office overlooks the F1 circuit near Raffles Boulevard where there are 3 curves in the road quite close to each other.
So I joined her on Friday night when the teams were doing test runs.Perched myself on her office table, munched on a carl's junior burger and fries, slurped my coke, and watched the cars go round the circuit like newbies on Need For Speed (here we go now). They went round the corner gingerly. They got better at it with every lap they took, and the progress was really cool to see. Above them, long lines of cars passed by serenely on the Benjamin Sheares bridge (why am I not surprised that there's a wikipedia entry?). Incidentally, Dr Benjamin Sheares delivered my father. How cool is it to have been delivered by a man who later became Singapore's 2nd President?

Back to F1. The cars were very loud. And that's an understatement. There was an incessant buzzing sound, which was loud and clear even from an enclosed office space!

I expanded my knowledge of the F1 universe... In addition to the instantly-recognisable Ferrari red, I can now tell a Mclaren-Mercedes car (orange and black...but looks like red and black). And a Honda (err I think it's white and green).

I wasn't an F1 fan but it's much more interesting to me now.

Hello again, Saturday

Saturday morning again! My morning for seeing what other bloggers have been up to this week. As an aside - remind me not to have a stereotypical Chinese Singaporean wedding. I want something different! Inspiration here.

Ok ok, I don't just spend Saturday mornings online. I like to:

• Wake up when I am ready to. Which is about 7 or 8, depending. Yes it's early but I sleep early too. And anyway I have a whole weekend waiting for me!
• Have breakfast. A very important meal indeed.
• Adjourn to the living room sofa with coffee cup, plop myself down, put my feet up and read the Straits Times from cover to cover. Flip, flip. Sip. Ahhhh. This morning's paper had a special on dementia and its growing occurance here. Very The Notebook-like, only much less romantic. I feel sad whenever I read about people who need help. I have so much, and there are people out there who would be happy with even a fraction. I'm chewing on what I can do. Meanwhile, it occurs to me that by staying gainfully employed, the work that i do contributes to keeping the economy going and the (meagre) taxes I pay help run programmes to help people in need! Cool.
• (When my ankle is well) Insert: Take a walk with mum in the park by the sea.
• Yes, my ankle still hurts. Maybe I should have an x-ray. I can hear my family going I told you so, or as they say in my family, THERE you go!!
• X-ray is a cool word, no? It is about the only word I know that starts with the letter X. THE LETTER X! HA HA HA HA! (I'm thinking about The Count from Sesame Street right now, if you wanna know). But, I digress.
  
• Mosey on to my room, turn on my iBook, check email, surf blogs or update mine, do online "errands" like settle bills.
  
• Tidy up my room, like my messy table top which has just accumulated piles of books to be read or paper to be recycled, cards to be written. My to-be corner.
• From time to time, roughly every 3 months, I take stock of how I'm doing financially. I think about my daily and other expenses and about financial goals. I realised that I was being pretty aimless so as a result of my ponderings, I've just opened a mysavings account.
• I realised that I don't do the same regular stocktake for my spiritual health, which ironically is more important to me than my financial health. Time to address that.
  

p.s. I had Abba songs in my head the whole week. Help!

Mamma Mia!

I love my family.

Tonight we watched Mamma Mia! My mum and dad, rarely seen on the movie circuit, joined us for a movie choc-a-block with Abba tunes. The movie had a pretty staged feeling at times, and it was seriously campy and cheesy in many parts but that's what you'd expect and besides that's what I was there for!

Funny moments:

My family are great sports and make things fun. Singing & jiggling along with the songs. My teenage cousin slouching in her chair with the embarrassment of it all (but singing along herself in Take A Chance On Me). They really should have a Abba sing-a-long movie screening.

The ladies in my family get weepy at touching scenes. The key Touching Moment in the movie was when Meryl Streep sings about seeing her daughter grow up. At the back of my head I was thinking, bet mum & aunt are feeling choked up now. At the exact moment, my cousin whispered to me: Got tissue (for mum & aunt)? Ha!

At the end, Meryl Streep and gang do a campy song & dance and then Meryl Streep asks if we want more. To which my aunt promptly yells, YES! And then they do a second song and dance! Ha ha!

My aunt sending an sms back to uncle (who opted to stay home) to dig out the ol' Abba cds! Abba fest!!

Ahhh... back to work, with lots of happy memories to smile at.

Thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy they're bringing
Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance what are we?
So I say thank you for the music
For giving it to me...

Yet another Saturday

Things I would like to do.

Cook risotto, one of my favourite dishes in cold temperate countries.
Make cute face-shaped (a la 27 dresses) blueberry pancakes or other things like pizza.

I have yearnings to make food in my own kitchen, where I can dilly dally to my heart's content and follow my own schedule, and have friends over to dinner. Being at home with my mum is lovely but she thinks I move too slowly! In her kitchen, I'll always be the kitchen hand. And when my grandma (Master Chef)'s around, my mum's demoted to kitchen hand and I, the grandchild who hops in and out of the kitchen to try a bit here and there but am otherwise of no help!

I think I'll just clean my room.

I slowed down

The prize for most creative bruises on a foot must surely go to me. I slipped on a step (or maybe it was two) at my aunt's home on Saturday. My left foot is puffy like it's been steamed or something, and my toes have been shaded in interesting variations of aubergine. And I just discovered a bruise on the underside of my foot yesterday!

I hobbled to work Mon to Wed. In tevas sandals and jeans (because you know, tevas would just look weird with anything else). Grandmas and grandpas and pregnant women whizzed by and left me in their dust. Working types eyed my foot quizzically.

I never realised how impatient commuters generally are. They walk really fast, cut into your lane abruptly, sometimes brushing against you a little with their bag or sleeve, all of which signals lady, you're moving too slowly.

In the midst of moving slowly, I slowed down. I had a newfound sympathy for people who could not move like regular folks. I noticed the people around me - how they walked, what they were wearing or doing, their body language.

And a slightly sad/alarming thing was, there I was walking by slowly and some people I knew would walk past me not even saying hello. Either they're as blur as I am or worse, I just never took the time to talk to people and now, I'm not someone they would bother to stop and talk to. Eeks. So slowing down has been good for me. I'm reminded to take the time to talk to people, look them in the eye, find out how they're doing.

My foot is getting better and I should be ok after today's trip to the doctor's and a day's rest at home. I'm raring to go and can't wait to re-start brisk walks in the park. Just as soon as I buy sports shoes.

Make-believe for grownups

Things I would bring to Paris

One of the reasons I loved the Sims was all the house-building, appliance-buying and home decorating I could do. I could spend ages in build mode, with unlimited cash (using the beautiful cheat codenamed "rosebud").

So you can imagine that all I could think when I found this site was, uh-oh.

It's a deviously easy site to use. It has beautiful clothes and shoes and bags and accessories. You drag and drop items you like. You delete them if you change your mind. You move them, resize them, flip them, bring them to the front or relegate them to the back. You put an outfit together. You try out different combinations with the same item. You add backgrounds and fonts. You share items and parade your collections. It's online shopping-meets-online community-meets-the sims-meets-photoshop-flickr-and-dafont all at the same time.

Signing off for the weekend...

Crafty

Another cute craft idea. Love the simplicity and charm of this birthday card!

The weekend's almost here! Already?! It was just yesterday we were at the red dot museum! The week's flown by. Which is good.

Chocolat

There are days when you need to break out your emergency stash of
chocolate.

Sunday Afternoon

Finally made it to MAAD, the Market of Artists and Designers, which is held on the first weekend of each month. Well I don't know about the 'bustling weekend market' it was billed as but it was interesting. The folks from the proletariat poetry factory made me wish we hadn't disposed of our old typewriter...saad... I liked their whole set up, the cute red jumpsuits and the whole i-am-a-slave-to-the-poetry-machine thing (read about them here).

Then on to Chinatown for dessert. Just a taster, though - we have got to make it back there for a whole afternoon of exploration and culinary delights!

In the evening - a date with my cousins to watch Camp Rock. "b-t-w, your lip gloss is sooo not glossy anymore"...ha ha! That is my new favourite lame line which I shall be using with great relish at the next opportune opportunity with the JB-besotted teens in my life.

On a more serious note... my grandma had a health scare this morning, though it turns out it is probably just vertigo and she's resting well at home right now. Still, she decided to divide her jewellery among her 5 daughters and 11 grandchildren. I don't know what to say. Sigh.

Publish Post

Sweeeet!

Free iphone wallpapers by interesting, talented artists.

Letterpress. Like these by Linda & Harriet and those by sweetbeets. I would love to go for a letterpress workshop but I haven't found anything available here. Trust me, I've been googling a lot on this.

More letterpressed stuff and other stationery by papersource.

Very cute handmade felt barrette project.

Super cool storytelling with custom-made books. Hey, I could do that! Although I'm reminded that I only got through 2 days (or was it 1 day?) of the recount of the first all-grown-up trip with my best friend to Phuket about 7 or 8 years ago. I think it was about a year after I'd started working and we were young(er) and the world was ours to explore. The project is err on an extended break.

My Official Saturday Food

The wind chimes by my balcony door have been working hard all morning. As you might realise by now, I enjoy my Saturday mornings at home. A leisurely morning with leisurely activities (or non-activity) accompanied by Official Saturday Food. Which to me is along the lines of porridge & assorted side dishes. Or bak chor mee. Or porridge with a delectable combination of mushrooms, minced meat, dried shrimps and diced long beans cooked stir-fried together and mixed into the porridge pot. Ooh, it's the best. Today though we had plain porridge with stir fried vegetables coated sparingly with eggs, steamed bak chor and garlic and needless to say my much loved Bee Cheng Hiang pork floss. Yums.

And oh yes, I'm going to Paris in October :)

Stationery fantasies

I was much amused by this photo from all*over*print. Time to dig out my collection of stationery sets!

Fri nite out

A Friday night out actually requires some effort on my part. I'm one of those people who get energized by peace & quiet rather than going out and painting the town red. Still, once I'm out I enjoy myself. Even if I do get sleepy at a really early hour (let's just say some of my friends' toddlers sleep later than I do).

Tonight I had dinner with my folks and a family friend, auntie esther. Oh, and as the saying goes, it never rains but pours... a couple of days ago, my colleague bought these pricey & exotic mooncakes. Turned out my dad had a liking for them, so I got him a box yesterday. Kinda nice to be extravagant with your nearest and dearest. Then tonight, guess what auntie esther happened to get us...??? So now we have TWO boxes in the fridge. My dad is a happy man indeed.

Tonight's adventure consisted of dining at Shatec's Rosette restaurant just off Killiney Road, about 5 minutes from Somerset MRT. Rosette, housed in an old colonial building together with a Shatec-run 3-star hotel, is a place for Shatac students to train on the job. It was cute to see them so earnest and in deep concentration - "Hello sir, how was the starter?""Could you give us your feedback about the main course?" I don't think I've had so much attention in a restaurant before, nor so many people smiling at me over the course of dinner. The place reminded me of a similar set-up in Hanoi for disadvantaged kids to learn a trade. I think this place is a great idea.

For $28 nett, we had a salad and scallop appetiser, soup, a little sorbet, stewed duck & duck confit, strawberry mousse for dessert and coffee. To keep things simple for the students, everyone gets the same menu with two choices for the main course. The food was decent and thoughtfully presented. Surprisingly, the place was almost full. Not your usual fine dining crowd, there were whole families there to support their kin, bunches of student types there to see their friends in action, squealing at the sight of them in chefs' attire or other uniforms. So it was a pretty laid-back atmosphere, though not for the students who were kept on their toes!

mmm....Mocha

I heart my favourite cafe mocha! From coffee culture at Biopolis. It's the best.

Handmade musings

I'm dreaming of handmade things. Cards, jewellery, prints...pretty artsy things. I wish we had cool craft-y flea market type places here, and a groundswell of artistry and craftmanship. I'm slowly browsing through the vendors exhibiting at the renegrade craft fair in Chicago.

6 months ago we were at a timeout-organised flea market which turned out to be ok-ayyyy. Pity it was a wet and rainy Sunday and there were just a handful of people wandering in to look. I remember some nice decorations for kids' rooms made by a Bali-based artist though, and I got a pretty necklace from these folks.

I like browsing people's shops in Etsy (oh what a nicely whimsical name for a craft haven). Like this one called Made by Hank. The pictures above are details of some of the bags this lady has made. I'm always drawn to POCKETS and HOOKS (in caps because they make me go Oooh! They just appeal to the ORGANISER fanatic in me...). I LOVE COMPARTMENTS for phones & keys. And the words she's sewen are so cute! I would do that...but for cards or little booklets, not for bags :)

I wonder if I could make anything for sale....just a little cottage industry. I wouldn't be surprised if handmade stuff is already or will be a big cottage industry in the next few years.